Where Did Dead Island 2 Go?

Some new reports have been popping up about the appearance, or rather disappearance, of Deep Silver's Dead Island 2. Why did I name the publisher and not the developer? Well, that's because there has yet to be a stable developer at the helm and the game seems to be in some sort of limbo.

According to PC Gamer they received word from Deep Silver about the game, where the company simply stated...

Dead Island 2 is in development with Sumo Digital. Once we have new details to share, we will do so.

This comes after gamers noticed that Dead Island 2 was no longer in Steam's listings, causing sites like PC Gamer to reach out and find out what was going on with the game.

The worry really sparked within the gaming community not just because of the listing but because over on the SteamDB page – a database that gives the public a look at the developmental backend for entries on Steam – no longer showed that Dead Island 2 was in the database and that the name had been switched to Unknown App 268150.

If you head to SteamDB, you'll note that the first entry was originally made 12 months ago, a year after the game was announced back in 2014. It was originally scheduled to release in the spring of 2015 for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. After a rather hokey cinematic trailer was released, the game went completely dark.

At first it was being helmed by Yager, the team that brought you the story-heavy shooter, Spec Ops: The Line. As noted in the PC Gamer article, Deep Silver and Yager did not see eye to eye when it came to the direction of the Dead Island sequel, and Deep Silver dismissed the developer from their duties in the summer of 2015, after the original release date deadline had been missed by several months.

Techland had mentioned that they would be interested in returning to Dead Island, and picking up Dead Island 2, comments that were made after they had the successful launch of Dying Light, but Deep Silver did not take them up on the offer.

Instead, the publisher decided to go with Sumo Digital, the studio from out of Sheffield, England who worked on a lot of sequels and spin-offs, such as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, LittleBigPlanet 3 and Forza Horizon 2 to name but a few. They're also currently pegged for their work on Crackdown 3 working under Microsoft, but that game has also gone dark after a few demonstrations of its physics technology was put on display a year prior. On the upside of Crackdown 3 we're at least expected to see and hear more at this year's E3.

During the same time, Sumo Digital is also working on Dead Island 2, but no word has been given on what the status of the game is. The SteamDB entry shows that on May 30th the game was removed from Steam, along with the genres and categories, practically making it a ghost entry. That does not bode well.

However, if Deep Silver says that Dead Island 2 is still in development, we'll just have to sit back and see what they have in store for the game.